The core elements of a microwave system include a radio transceiver, an antenna, an antenna feed mechanism, and the necessary RF cabling to connect these elements and one or more client stations. Client stations are connected to the radio transceiver via digital cables. The performance of the microwave antenna system is based upon the characteristics of the aforementioned elements and the efficiency of integration of these elements into a system. There have been many improvement of microwave system over the years, and the demand for microwave systems continues to grow, in part due to the large demand for internet service in remote areas of the world. Thus, there is a motivation to have further improvements in the cost and performance of microwave systems.
Some of considerations in an improved cost and performance microwave system include:
Lower cost via a reduced component count and a reduction or elimination of the expensive RF cable.
Higher performance due to reduction of RF cable and RF connector losses that effect both the transmit power and receive noise figure.
Higher reliability due to a reduced part count and RF connectors.
Improved ease of use when the user set-up only has a digital interface instead of having both an RF and digital interfaces.
Improved ease of use since there are fewer parts required for the set-up of a radio link.
Improved ease of use and functionality when the radio transceiver and antenna is powered by a digital cable.
Accordingly, the aforementioned factors provide motivation for improvements in the design of microwave systems.